tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3422954264843806292018-03-05T07:37:25.762-08:00An Ode to Procrastinationleigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-12610130391225932962008-09-11T15:50:00.000-07:002008-09-11T15:59:58.113-07:00Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the World Yet?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ZJtQOGUSYbI/SMmi59t1OxI/AAAAAAAAAFo/WCBsaLbmJJg/s1600-h/Screenshot-Has+the+Large+Hadron+Collider+destroyed+the+world+yet%3F+-+Mozilla+Firefox.png"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ZJtQOGUSYbI/SMmi59t1OxI/AAAAAAAAAFo/WCBsaLbmJJg/s320/Screenshot-Has+the+Large+Hadron+Collider+destroyed+the+world+yet%3F+-+Mozilla+Firefox.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5244902357752691474" /></a><br />Be sure to subscribe to the <a href="http://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/atom.xml">RSS feed</a> for updates.leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-25857705493865721032008-09-05T07:23:00.000-07:002008-09-05T07:38:03.165-07:00I left my first year textbooks at Joey and Liz's before I went to Masset. Yesterday, I borrowed a CanCart to bring my books back to campus (CanCarts look like this and it was about 75% full):<br /><img src="http://www.cities21.org/grocery/cancart.jpg" /> <br />Anywho...<br /><br />Friend 1: Wow, they really do try to weed you out in first year science!<br />Friend 2: Do <i>YOU</i> have the upper body strength to be in science?!leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-28404379871368372552008-08-31T16:38:00.000-07:002008-08-31T16:39:57.213-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZJtQOGUSYbI/SLsrolRBYAI/AAAAAAAAAFg/Q5bz6_KVVrU/s1600-h/lolita.png"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZJtQOGUSYbI/SLsrolRBYAI/AAAAAAAAAFg/Q5bz6_KVVrU/s320/lolita.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5240830567573970946" /></a><br /><br />Nabokov is fucking brilliant. That is all.<br /><br />(I know. I know. Way to state the obvious)leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-54676347955416912842008-08-29T09:11:00.000-07:002008-08-29T09:16:33.460-07:00Resolutions for a New Term<ul><li>Stop being so judgmental</li><br /><li>Really <i>listen</i></li><br /><li>Make time to appreciate great literature</li><br /><li>Type properly</li></ul><br /><br />And you know, get good grades, actually do the pre-reading, etc.leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-3791890942645122572008-08-07T17:39:00.000-07:002008-08-07T18:09:25.732-07:00"how are you?"One of the best things about being back home is the change in the value people place on their relationships. People shamelessly want to spend time with each other. Nobody here chooses "maybe attending" (fuck you facebook). Everyone is in everyone else's space all the time. Yes, it's somewhat invasive. Yes, it's dramatic, but in my community, we genuinely care about each other and get to know our neighbors. <br /><br />No one rushes in Masset. A quick trip to the store for milk can easily turn in to an hour-long chat. People choose to spend time together on a whim. Dropping by unannounced produces no discomfort for anyone involved. I feel like when someone stops me in the street and asks me how I'm doing, whatever I answer actually matters. <br /><br />At work, however, things are entirely different. I'm still not sure what I want to be when I grow up but I do know that whatever I end up doing, I won't do it wearing a name tag. I work a relatively menial job that requires a lot of interaction with the general public. Consequently, this means that I get asked "How are you?" about once every 3 minutes, but this time no one cares about the answers. Every time I respond, "I'm fine thank-you, how are you doing?" but feel silly doing so because I don't really care what they answer either. It's a waste of time and energy. I wondered recently what would happen if I started questions I actually wanted to hear answers to. <br /><br />Do you feel like you're part of a community?<br />Can you tell my why you're monogamous?<br />Do you like your siblings?<br />Are your parents still alive?<br />What has made you happy today?<br />What can you be passionate about, more than anything in the world?<br /><br />I doubt I'd get any responses and the credit union isn't the best place for a nice chat so instead, can I please ask one thing of you? Please only ask "how are you?" or "how's it going" if you care what the answers are. I'll try my best to do the same. Deal?leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-2262253878776728192008-08-04T00:57:00.000-07:002008-12-11T20:23:04.999-08:00and breakfastI'm sure you've all heard me gush about Celine's <a href="http://www.havecakewilltravel.com/">Have Cake, Will Travel</a>. Celine's started a new blog, <a href="http://www.andbreakfast.net/">and breakfast</a>, "a mish-mash of all things that make life a treat" that you should check out; it's lovely! I nabbed the image below from and breakfast to give you a taste of the pleasures that await you when you check out the site <a href="http://www.andbreakfast.net/">[here]</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZJtQOGUSYbI/SJa3Urv-DSI/AAAAAAAAAFY/CyHXGA2ItMY/s1600-h/%26breakfast.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZJtQOGUSYbI/SJa3Urv-DSI/AAAAAAAAAFY/CyHXGA2ItMY/s320/%26breakfast.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230569583206599970" /></a>leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-12498830869784245602008-08-03T00:51:00.000-07:002008-12-11T20:23:05.247-08:00Thoughts on Brave New WorldI'm glad that <a href="http://members.shaw.ca/fyda/">Wendy</a> talked me into reading <u>Brave New World</u> or rather, just handed me a copy and went "borrow this". In any case, that worked out nicely and I'm glad I've finally read it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZJtQOGUSYbI/SJVq9Zgs8FI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/giBi2-aYhtc/s1600-h/bnw.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZJtQOGUSYbI/SJVq9Zgs8FI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/giBi2-aYhtc/s320/bnw.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230204145313312850" /></a><br /><br />While I was reading <u>Nineteen Eighty-Four</u>, <u>Anthem</u>, <u>Never Let Me Go</u>, and <u>A Handmaid's Tale</u> I was left with a feeling throughout the whole novel that <i>everything</i> seemed inherently wrong. They made for fun reads because everything seemed so outlandish. What was truly striking about <u>Brave New World</u> was that things weren't so black and white so I was forced to connect what I was reading directly to the world I live in. As a reader I couldn't conveniently condemn everything as immoral because I think: <ul><br /><li>hedonism is perfectly okay as long as it's not at someone else's expense</li><br /><li>monogamy is overrated</li><br /><li>we musn't make such a fuss about death because what can you do about it, really?</li></ul><br />These are all values that would be perfectly acceptable to have in BNW society. I'm not saying that there weren't parts of BNW that were disturbing. Much of it was.<br /><br />Throughout the entire novel, I found myself questioning whether or not the people raised in BNW's society could truly be happy. I've been conditioned to believe that I need to experience pain and suffering to truly live but if I hadn't grown up with this belief, could I be happy as an oblivious Gamma if I'd been conditioned differently? What seemed to be lacking was <i>passion</i>, but I don't think you can have passion in an obnoxiously carefree, healthy, happy (?) society. I guess from this I can take the idea that we musn't devalue art. Art captures passion and feeling. It drives people. It can be breathtaking. I can't imagine a world without it. Surrounded by science elitists, I find that I can forget this too easily. But then science in the pure, beautiful way I know it doesn't really exist in BNW either.leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-62838110568980734382008-08-03T00:40:00.000-07:002008-08-24T09:18:34.524-07:00Summer Reading ProgressI posted this over at my <a href="http://leigh-a.livejournal.com/35448.html">LJ</a> but I would advise against checking out my LJ. It's angsty over there. Don't say I didn't warn you!<br /><br />Early Summer (April - June)<br /><s><i>I, Robot</i> (Isaac Asimov)</s><br /><s><i>The Professor</i> (Rex Warner)</s><br /><s><i>Lullabies For Little Criminals</i> (Heather O'Neill)</s><br /><br />Late Summer (July - August)<br /><i>Lolita</i> (Vladimir Nabokov)<br /><s><i>The Master and Margarita</i> (Mikhail Bulgakov) Yes, again, but I don't think I fully appreciated it the first time.</s><br /><i>Nausea</i> (Jean-Paul Sartre)<br /><s><i>Timequake</i> (Kurt Vonnegut)</s><br /><s><i>The Awakening</i> (Kate Chopin)</s><br /><s><i>Anthem</i> (Ayn Rand)</s><br /><s><i>Bluebeard</i> (Kurt Vonnegut)</s><br /><s><i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</i> (Douglas Adams)</s><br /><s><i>The Restaurant at the End of the Universe</i> (Douglas Adams)</s><br /><s><i>Brave New World</i> (Aldous Huxley)</s><br /><s><i>Lenny Bruce is Dead</i> (Jonathan Goldstein)</s>leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-64561705175238593212008-08-02T21:55:00.000-07:002008-12-11T20:23:05.443-08:00Screw you, ScienceDirectOn a ridiculously belated note, I've started reading about the <a href="http://www.stepstudies.com">Step Studies</a>. My fascination with this study reminded me that I've been meaning to make a briefing on recent HIV/AIDS research developments to send to the <a href="http://www.aidsincontext.org">AIC</a> listserv. Doing this sort of thing helps to ensure that I don't read about things like Step months after they happen. So I connected to the VPN, pulled up a search and everything I wanted to read was on ScienceDirect, which is down (hence the title of this post).<br /><br />This post is really quite useless. I should be posting something of substance soon.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZJtQOGUSYbI/SJU7M6AI0dI/AAAAAAAAAFI/ciw-9vNqXes/s1600-h/Picture+1.png"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZJtQOGUSYbI/SJU7M6AI0dI/AAAAAAAAAFI/ciw-9vNqXes/s320/Picture+1.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230151635175002578" /></a>leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-76336402411354809092008-03-05T21:39:00.000-08:002008-03-05T21:44:11.098-08:00Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics<img src="http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c110/lan-m/bs2.jpg" / > <br /><a href="http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm">Check it.</a>leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-90112112286098920242008-02-29T23:35:00.000-08:002008-02-29T23:42:25.654-08:00On LaTeX updatesI've decided that I'm only going to update if I figure out how to do something particularly cool, so it could be a while. Reading about me getting the basics down is not terribly interesting and I find that I can stay motivated fairly easily. I've been LaTeXing my assignments for practice and I've learned a fair bit from each one. I've reached the point where I can do a decent job at LaTeXing my calc assignments and physics solutions for friends in class. Once I reach the point where I can do this without constantly using online resources I think I'll blog about LaTeX again. You can still expect other nerdery here though!leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-89081799052696265832008-02-15T16:20:00.000-08:002008-02-15T16:26:55.896-08:00"I'm a gangster nerd. You can't code like me"<img src="http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c110/lan-m/cover.jpg" /><br /><img src="http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c110/lan-m/chip-hop-cover.jpg" /><br /><br />MC Plus+, previously known as Sir-Code-A-Lot has made some hot tracks available for download over at <a href="http://www.mcplusplus.com/downloads">http://www.mcplusplus.com/downloads</a>.<br /><br />This is pretty much my favourite thing ever.leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-47392507817316875062008-02-12T12:51:00.000-08:002008-02-12T22:34:21.857-08:00Bose-Einstein CondensateSo on Saturday Micky and I made the trek out to TRIUMF for one of the Saturday morning <a href="http://www.triumf.info/public/students/lectures.php">lectures</a>, titled "Bose-Einstein condensation; quantum weirdness at the lowest temperature in the universe". <br /><br />One word - awesome!<br /><br /><img src="http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c110/lan-m/carl_n_eric.jpg" /><br /><p style="font-size:xx-small;">Photo from the <a href="http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/bec/">BEC</a> website</p><br />Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell synthesized the first Bose-Einstein Condensate in 1995. The idea that such a thing could exist arose in the early 1920s but was not produced until the 90s. <br /><br />Two main things I took from the lecture:<br />1) Even just the idea of cooling something to 0.000000170 K is wicked cool<br />2) It basically changed how I perceive quantum mechanics. Pre-lecture, I just kind of though of QM as something miniscule that was nifty to study but difficult to conceptualize. Condensates are something you can actually see and understanding QM better in this way is pretty amazing.<br /><br />Post-lecture, I immediately facebooked a friend to be like, "THE COLDEST MATTER WE KNOW OF EXISTS IN YOUR HOMETOWN! <b>OMG</b>" to which he responded, "Oh yeah, CU Physics tends to do stuff like that." Well, I still think it's awesome.<br /><br />Anyway, I'm not really going to try to explain this here when you can check out the BEC website <a href="http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/bec/">here</a>.<br /><br />Three things I think you should do:<br />-Check out the BEC website<br />-Play with <a href="http://phet.colorado.edu/new/simulations/index.php?cat=Top_Simulations">PhET</a> simulations (SO COOL!)<br />-Vote in the VP Admin elections<br /><br /><img src="http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c110/lan-m/box_o_bec.gif" />leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-90927152946881418702008-01-16T17:51:00.000-08:002008-01-17T21:40:16.959-08:00small matrices and titlesWow, it's been a while. I've decided that I'm going to try to LaTeX my homework assignments for practice. This one is from my Matrix Algebra course so having nice column vectors is kind of a necessity. On my first try, I thought I'd try formatting the first vector as an array but it was much larger than I would have liked and I didn't realize that \[ and \] essentially produced the same thing as $$ so I didn't get why it was centering the vector. <br /><br /><img src="http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c110/lan-m/Picture2.png" /><br /><br />(yes, I know King Edward and Marine Drive are parallel. This is not the point!)<br /><br />What I really wanted was to have them formatted like the position vectors in the notes my prof posted:<br /><br /><img src="http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c110/lan-m/Picture3.png" /><br /><br />After some searching around and consulting bugging some people for help, I eventually figured out how to produce the results I wanted, and found out that I should have been using \( and \) or just $ instead. Oh, and I played around with titles for a bit, which was something I hadn't tried previously. <br /><br />This is the result (or the first few questions anyhow):<br /><br /><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2238/2198854044_3198eb444e_o.png" /><br /><br />And the corresponding LaTeX (there's more after but you're only really missing \end{document}):<br /> <br /><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2229/2198854072_cd2cf8a24a.jpg" /><br /><br />Checklist for next time/whenever I finish this one:<br />-Apparently there's a way to get LaTeX to do the numbering for me so that I don't have to keep going \bm 1.2 \rm etc. Anyway, figure out how to do this.<br />-Figure out how to integrate graphs/convert graphs to .eps format, perhaps using Grapher (?). I used to graph with Winplot in a very stumble-around-in-the-darkness sort of way but I never tried doing anything with LaTeX at the time, plus since I now have a Mac I can't use it anyway. Well, something to look in to anyway.<br />-Stop being so sloppy with all the \\s. I know that I don't need them all but I'm just being lazy by not bothering to think about when I really need them.leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-48744204721535498212007-12-03T14:50:00.000-08:002007-12-10T01:50:10.629-08:00Okay, Jason, here's something for you to comment onOkay, even being in the midst of exams I had to comment on this one.<br /><br />UNAIDS has recently revised its estimates for the number of people living with HIV/AIDS. The 2007 estimate was reduced to 33.2 million (down from 39.5 million in 2006). Report <a href="http://www.unaids.org/en/HIV_data/2007EpiUpdate/default.asp">here</a>.<br /><br />This has lead to a fair bit of controversy, to the point where even relatively uninformed Leigh-Anne has stumbled upon multiple articles commenting on it in the past week. <br /><br />Stephen Lewis made a speech at the World Health Editors Network in London, commenting that the revision "undermined public confidence in the reliability of the figures, introducing completely unnecessary levels of doubt, contention and confusion" (quoted at <a href="http://www.eatg.org/news/newsitem.php?id=13813">EATG</a> and if that isn't reliable enough for you just google <a href="http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=%22World+Health+Editors+Network%22+AND+%22Stephen+Lewis%22&btnG=Google+Search&meta=">"World Health Editors Network" AND "Stephen Lewis"</a>). He also pointed out that statisticians and epidemiologists have been calling for a revision for quite some time, that there was too much of a focus on statistics, thus failing to address the human tragedy, and that regardless the amount of aid still runs short of where it needs to be.<br /><br />At least he acknowledged that UNAIDS did not maintain artificially high estimates in an attempt to garner more aid. I've seen this come up in some of the commentary and it's quite ridiculous. If that were the case, why bother revising the estimates in the first place? <br /><br />The second point I agree with is that there is still so much that can be done to help tame the epidemic regardless of decreased estimates. Obviously.<br /><br />However, I just can't bring myself to shift most of the blame to UNAIDS. Sure, maybe this will cause the general public to "doubt, contention and confusion" but if it's possible to improve the methodology for collecting data it is absolutely necessary. Accuracy is almost never unnecessary. Even if there are papers floating around in academia with ideas for improving the methodology, simply writing a paper will not solve the world's problems. You need to put some effort in if you'd like your idea to be implemented on a large scale. Come on, it's not like estimating the prevalence of a worldwide disease is a small job.<br /><br />Also, how can you expect a statistical report to properly assess the human tragedy? In AIDS in Context we often talk about the effectiveness of making emotional connections, but any AIC-er can tell you that talking about emotional connections and actually creating them are two profoundly different things. The World Vision approach is completely overdone so what do we do now? One musn't talk flippantly about creating an understanding of human tragedy.<br /><br />Another thing brought up in the UN report is that changing prevalence rates in India have legitimately affected the statistic. I think this is fair, but this is possibly because India is the quintessential example of generic ARVs having a significant effect on a population. In fact, since 1994, Cipla in Mumbai has launched 10 different types of ARVs, with the price of therapy constantly dropping. Generic HAART (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy) can be bought for $250 USD a year, less than it costs to monitor CD4 counts and viral load. Definitely more people are receiving treatment, and thus transmission would also be down due to the effects of the ARVs. However, don't forget that correctly administered ARV therapy requires skilled and dedicated physicians to avoid ARV failure and resistance. With the current influx of ARVs, I'm not sure if this is happening, but I guess that just means I need to do more research (stats from a Lancet report <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T1B-4CS4364-3&_user=1022551&_coverDate=07%2F09%2F2004&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050484&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1022551&md5=5af81c7bb2415545daa8beb15cc27725">here</a> - subscription needed; if you're connected to the UBC VPN you'll be fine or email me if you have problems)<br /><br />Yet another thing to consider is that ARV availability has not taken a positive upturn everywhere like it has in India. This statistic measures number of people living with AIDS, not number of cases contracted and we musn't be mesmerized by the successes in India and forget that there are still many who don't get the treatment they need (assuming they want it). This is a very roundabout way of saying that some people are still dying shortly after being infected. <br /><br />A good point made by David Ng at <a href="http://www.terry.ubc.ca/index.php/2007/11/21/aid-stats-are-off-and-like-the-point-is/">Terry</a> is that regardless of the actual number, HIV/AIDS is still a pertinent global issue that we need to keep caring about and acting on. It's not like the situation is any less important.leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-36170596373474085762007-11-24T23:37:00.000-08:002008-01-19T12:28:57.769-08:00step 2: actually typeset somethingSo if you haven't picked up on this, I'm trying to learn about LaTeX and I'm going to keep a blog to track my progress and motivate me to keep learning at a reasonable pace. I am not very good at computers so if you are, this is going to be terribly dull for you to follow. It will involve much oversimplification but what do you expect from a (disappointingly) computer-illiterate mathie who needs to break things down that way to understand? Haha, if you are good with computers and you're reading this you must think I'm a complete idiot. I'm not completely incompetent, I promise. I can write history essays. And, uh, write history essays. <br /><br />Anyway... after reading a couple chapters detailing the intricacies of different dashes in TeX and adding emphasis to words, I became terribly bored and just wanted to try something out. The quadratic formula part is, for the most part, shamelessly stolen from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX">Wikipedia's TeX entry</a>.<br /> <br /><img src="http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c110/lan-m/Picture2-1.png" /><br /><br />Obviously I still have a lot to learn but there it's definitely a lot easier to learn things just by doing. A short summary of what I've learned and tried so far:<br /><br />-Every document begins by defining what kind of document you're typesetting. I just used /documentclass{article} because that's what's in all the examples and I haven't explored the other options yet.<br />-You must add \begin{document}. You can add other things between these two commands but I don't know about them yet!<br />-$ and $$ set off formulas<br />-Bold and italics can be incorporated as follows: \itemphasis\rm or \bf{emphasis} with it being italics, bf being bold font and \rm being a closing tag meaning roman font<br />-As described in the sample, one should be conscious of dashes and hyphens. One hyphen(-) will produce a simple hyphen (for hyphenated words), two (--) will produce an en dash suitable for ranges, three (---) will produce an en dash for punctuation to represent a break in thought, and a hyphen inside a formula will produce a minus sign (use $-$). <br />-LaTeX will automatically adjust the spacing, so I added some errant spacing to observe this effect<br />-This introduced me to a few commands used in formulas like the square root (\sqrt) and how to represent fractions (\over).<br /><br />This was the result:<br /><br /><img src="http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c110/lan-m/Picture1.png" />leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-14444534080375785072007-11-08T21:57:00.000-08:002008-12-11T20:23:05.605-08:00history graduate students ass'n book sale!As you probably inferred from the title, I bought some books at the book sale in the SUB and I'm showing them off! <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZJtQOGUSYbI/RzP3gIyZd2I/AAAAAAAAADg/BnrFqz8gnHM/s1600-h/Photo+5.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZJtQOGUSYbI/RzP3gIyZd2I/AAAAAAAAADg/BnrFqz8gnHM/s320/Photo+5.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5130716531991869282" /></a><br /><br />I got 2 essays by Arundhati Roy in the book <u>The Cost of Living</u> and a copy of my great grandmother's anthropological life history. I've never had a copy of <u>During My Time</u> to call my own, so I'm pretty happy I managed to pick one up for a dollar. I'll be blogging about <u>The Cost of Living</u> later.leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-59006652857920865062007-11-04T11:30:00.000-08:002007-11-04T11:53:47.523-08:00I've actually installed MacTeX this time...I've always wanted to learn <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX">TeX</a> but I kind of suck at computers. I'm not letting this stop me so let's get going! <br /><br />I somehow managed to struggle with actually downloading TeX for hours. If you know anything about computers, this probably seems impossible and maybe it is a little. Actually I'm so bad with computers that this blog probably happened by accident, but I digress.<br /><br />Anyway, after a few trials in the last month or so, I decided to give this download another try. I followed the <a href="http://www.tug.org/mactex/">instructions</a> on the TeX users group, much like I did the other times, but this time it worked. Hurrah!<br /><br />I clicked on the download then worked on my essay while I waited. When it finished:<br /><br />1)Click on this:<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/11305859@N00/1860956096/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2113/1860956096_d077156d78_o.png" width="105" height="85" alt="Picture 3" /></a><br /><br />2)Now you'll see this open. Click on the only option:<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/11305859@N00/1860129689/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2220/1860129689_e5fb47fcb7.jpg" width="500" height="286" alt="Picture 2" /></a><br /><br />Now a very autonomous and straightforward installer opens. Go through all the steps and look in your applications for the program.<br /><br />I have no idea how I managed to screw this up before.leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-342295426484380629.post-19144916416121769772007-11-03T22:42:00.000-07:002007-11-03T23:05:01.325-07:00The Truth ExperimentI read the <a href="http://www.scq.ubc.ca/about/">Science Creative Quarterly</a> on a regular basis. Well, I've just started recently but I intend to continue. I came across SCQ's <a href="http://scq.ubc.ca/?p=677">truth</a> experiment which I think is worth a click. Aside from the fact that I do agree with many of the points presented, mostly it's the idea of playing with Google's results that is interesting (obvs). Check it.leigh-annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14217019062082018463noreply@blogger.com2